What next, big sky?
NASA's Kepler space telescope, which was designed to hunt for Earth-like planets, is broken and can't be fixed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/science/space/nasas-kepler-mended-but-may-never-fully-recover.html?hp
Sometimes it's hard to grasp all the big numbers associated with astronomy, and sometimes we are unaware of the complexity of instruments we send into space. Here's how the Times article describes how the Kepler telescope is supposed to work:
In order to do its job of precisely monitoring starlight, Kepler has to keep pointing accurately enough so that each star in the field of view stays on the same pixel in the detector, equivalent to pinpointing a soccer ball in Central Park as seen from San Francisco.
Wow. What else is there to say?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/science/space/nasas-kepler-mended-but-may-never-fully-recover.html?hp
Sometimes it's hard to grasp all the big numbers associated with astronomy, and sometimes we are unaware of the complexity of instruments we send into space. Here's how the Times article describes how the Kepler telescope is supposed to work:
In order to do its job of precisely monitoring starlight, Kepler has to keep pointing accurately enough so that each star in the field of view stays on the same pixel in the detector, equivalent to pinpointing a soccer ball in Central Park as seen from San Francisco.
Wow. What else is there to say?